Adult-born granule cells mature through two functionally distinct states
- Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
- University of Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
Adult-born granule cells (ABGCs) are involved in certain forms of hippocampus-dependent learning and memory. It has been proposed that young but functionally integrated ABGCs (4-weeks-old) specifically contribute to pattern separation functions of the dentate gyrus due to their heightened excitability, whereas old ABGCs (>8-weeks-old) lose these capabilities. Measuring multiple cellular and integrative characteristics of 3-10 weeks old individual ABGCs, we show that ABGCs consist of two functionally distinguishable populations showing highly distinct input integration properties (one group being highly sensitive to narrow input intensity ranges while the other group linearly reports input strength) that are largely independent of the cellular age and maturation stage, suggesting that 'classmate' cells (born during the same period) can contribute to the network with fundamentally different functions. Thus, ABGCs provide two temporally overlapping but functionally distinct neuronal cell populations, adding a novel level of complexity to our understanding of how life-long neurogenesis contributes to adult brain function.
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Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experimental procedures were performed in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the Institute of Experimental Medicine Protection of Research Subjects Committee (permission: 22.1/1760/003/2009) and were approved by the local virus safety committee.
Copyright
© 2014, Brunner et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Adult-born granule cells mature through two functionally distinct states
eLife 3:e03104.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.03104
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